ATTENTION AND

CONSCIOUSNESS
 ATTENTION is the taking possession of the
mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what
seem several simultaneously possible objects or
trains of thoughts. It implies withdrawal from
some things in order to deal effectively with
others.
- William James,
Principles of Psychology
ATTENTION
 we actively process a limited amount of
information from the enormous amount of
information available through our senses, our
stored memories and our other cognitive
processes.
 It involves both conscious and unconscious
processes.
 Allows us to use our limited mental resources
judiciously.
 Heightened attention also paves the way for more
memory process. We are more likely to remember
information to which we paid attention more than
information we ignored.
 CONSCIOUSNESS includes both the feeling of
awareness and the content of awareness.
 3 purposes of conscious attention
 Monitoring interactions with the environment
 Assists in linking past and present
 Controlling and planning future actions
FOUR MAIN FUNCTIONS OF ATTENTION
 Signal detection and vigilance
 We try to detect the appearance of a particular
stimulus.
 On many occasions, we vigilantly try to detect
whether we did or did not sense a signal—a
particular target stimulus of interest. Through
vigilant attention to detecting signals, we are primed
to take speedy action when we do detect signal
stimuli.
 Signal-detection theory (SDT) is a framework to
explain how people pick out the few important
stimuli when they are embedded in a wealth of
irrelevant, distracting stimuli.
 Vigilance refers to a person’s ability to attend to
a field of stimulation over a prolonged period,
during which the person seeks to detect the
appearance of a particular target stimulus of
interest
SEARCH
 Scan of the environment for particular features.
 Search is more difficult with distractors.
 Feature Search: looking for something with a
distinctive shape or color.
 Conjunction search: particular combination of
features.
FEATURE INTEGRATION
THEORY
Explains the relative case
of conducting feature
searches and the relative
difficulty of conducting
conjunction searches.
SIMILARITY THEORY
 the data are a result of the factthat
as the similarity between target and
distracter stimuli increases, so does
the difficulty in detecting the target
stimuli. Thus, targets that are
highly similar to distracters are
relatively hard to detect.
 Targets that are highly disparate
from distracters are relatively easy
to detect.
GUIDED SEARCH THEORY
 that all searches, whether feature searches or
conjunction searches, involve two consecutive
stages.
 The first is a parallel stage: the individual
simultaneously activates a mental representation
of all the potential targets. The representation is
based on the simultaneous activation of each of
the features of the target. In a subsequent serial
stage, the individual sequentially evaluates each
of the activated elements, according to the degree
of activation. Then, the person chooses the true
targets from the activated elements searches.
 SELECTIVE ATTENTION
referred to this phenomenon
as the cocktail party problem,
the process of tracking one
conversation in the face of
the distraction of other
conversations.
 RED
BLUE
WHITE

GREEN
VIOLET
YELLOW
PINK
DIVIDED ATTENTION
Trying to attend two
stimuli at once and
making multiple response
rather than making one
response to multiple
stimuli.
PROBLEMS OF ATTENTION
Focusing
Sustaining
Encoding
shifting
SPATIAL NEGLECT
 Patients ignore half of their visual
field.
 Inability to report respond or orient
to stimuli generally in the
contralesional space
CHANGE BLINDNESS
 Inability
to detect changes in objects
or scenes that are viewed.
ADHD

 Attention deficit hyperactivity have difficulties in

focusing their attention in ways that enable them to
adapt in optimal ways to their environment.
 The three primary symptoms of ADHD are
inattention, hyperactivity (i.e., levels of activity that
exceed what is normally shown by children of a given
age), and impulsiveness. There are three main types of
ADHD, depending on which symptoms are
predominant:
 (a) hyperactive-impulsive,

 (b) inattentive, and

 (c) a combination of hyperactive-impulsive and

inattentive behavior
 They are easily distracted by irrelevant sights
and sounds.
 They often fail to pay attention to details.

 They are susceptible to making careless

mistakes in their work.
 They often fail to read instructions completely
or carefully.
 They are susceptible to forgetting or losing
things they need for tasks, such as pencils or
books.
 They tend to jump from one incomplete task to
another.